Focuses on concepts and arguments from psychoanalysis and presents an example of a counterargument on the slip of the tongue. The article delineates psycholinguistic accounts of speech errors, showing how these accounts can enhance a comparison of three samples of literary and nonliterary word substitutions that elucidate claims being made in…

Data are presented on some aspects of metalinguistic awareness in Dutch adults who emigrated to Australia at least 25 years ago. The findings show that the migrants do not differ significantly from a control group in the Netherlands, suggesting that first-language metalinguistic skills are extremely resistant to attrition. (Contains nine…

A bilingual child's development of word order in German and English subordinate clauses was followed between age 3 and 5, and a number of diversions from the development of word order in such clauses by monolingual children was noted. (Contains five references.) (Author/LB)

Two surveys conducted in the Soviet Union are reported that demonstrate the complicated interrelationship between linguistic form and meaning. They support Jakobson and Gorbacevic on gender signalling, particularly when the speaker is not certain of the noun in question. (Contains 44 references.) (LB)

This study investigated four- and six-year-olds' support pursuing the role of positive evidence in the acquisition of the knowledge of lexical features such as the control status of individual verbs. Findings seem to be compatible with a claim that grammatical knowledge is instantaneous. (Contains 24 references.) (Author/LB)

It is argued that quantitative research methods used alone often fail to adequately capture the complexities of spoken interaction; the inclusion of qualitative analysis can produce a greater insight into the functions of different interactive strategies and provides a valuable additional perspective to research into gender differences. (Contains…

Major issues concerning vocabulary learning and instruction are discussed, and different ways that vocabulary is taught in the classroom are reviewed. It is argued that helping students develop strategies and knowledge to use internal and external contexts to infer meanings is a major step toward helping them become independent learners. (Contains…

Reviews the reasons for the discourse problem in language study, examines the nature of this problem, and suggests ways in which applied linguists and foreign language teachers can engage in intellectual dialog. It is suggested that applied linguists and language teachers can understand one another by exploring the forces that have shaped their…

Examines the relative contributions of linguistic and strategic competence to the performance of international teaching assistants (ITAs) on a teaching task. Study one examines the relative contribution of language and teaching skills to overall test performance, and study two examines the effect of a one-semester training class on the retest…

Reviews recent research on the use of language in the mass media, focusing on the work of Teun van Dijk, A. Bell, Roger Fowler, and Norman Fairclough, as well as research on broadcast interviews, talk shows, and advertising. An annotated bibliography discusses 16 important works in the field. (58 references) (MDM)

This article is derived from a lecture broadcast on the BBC World Service, in which the author takes the reader on a journey to visit selected features of contemporary English in use, with the intent of pointing out to the traveler some implications for the presentation of language in textbooks and other curriculum documents. (nine references)…

Examines the effects of power relations and audience on language usage, presenting data from a language attitude study that involved interviews between Dutch teachers and adolescents. It is argued that if speakers are expected to tailor their language to their audience, more flexibility must be allowed in role relations than what is suggested by…

Addresses the difficulty of article acquisition by examining the perception of noun countability by native speakers of English and Japanese speakers of English, testing whether native and nonnative speakers have different perceptions of countability. Results suggest a possible link between the indefinite versus zero article suppliance by Japanese…

Argues that root infinitives produced by Italian toddlers learning a second language are truncated structures, arising from the option of "stripping off" external clausal layers. The basic properties of the construction are shown to be amenable to the Truncation Hypothesis, in that root infinitives are incompatible with /wh/ elements,…

Criticizes the research of Clahsen (1991) and Clahsen and others (1992), which claims that a statistical tendency to produce more irregular than regular plurals in compounds among native and non-native learners of German is due to a biologically innate predisposition accounted for by the level-ordered morphology model of Kiparsky (1982). (Contains…